Neil Jenney is a self-taught artist born on November 6, 1945 in Torrington, Connecticut. He attended Massachusetts College of Art in 1964. In 1966 he moved to New York City where he currently resides. His painting style was described by the art critic

Marcia Tucker Marcia Tucker (born Marcia Silverman; April 11, 1940 – October 17, 2006)Smith, Roberta ''The New York Times'' (October 19, 2006), Retrieved 23 November 2014. was an American art historian, art critic and curator. In 1977 she founded the New Muse ...

in 1978 as

Bad Painting "Bad" Painting is the name given by critic and curator Marcia Tucker to a trend in American figurative painting in the 1970s. Tucker curated an exhibition of the same name at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, featuring the work of four ...

, a description which he has embraced. Jenney describes his style as realism, but it is an idiosyncratic use of the word on his part, meaning: a style in which narrative truths are found in the simple relationships of objects. His body of work during 1969–1970, which is the period for which he was first known, was a reaction to

minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

and

photo-realism Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another Medium (arts), medium. Although ...

. The work's impact was large for such a brief period: according to New York Times art critic Roberta Smith "in those two years Mr. Jenney helped put representational painting on a new course and established precedents for the art of the 1970s, 80s and 90s." Often, Jenney's work of this period depicted pairs of objects which had evocative cause and effect relationships (such as a saw and a piece of cut wood, as are depicted in the 1969 piece ''Sawn and Saw''.) In an April 15, 2001 review in the

New York Observer New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

of his show of work from the late 60s and early 70s at Gagosian Gallery, Mario Naves said that the paintings:

"...aren't really bad at least not bad bad. That pejorative adjective, in Mr. Jenney's case, comes with scare quotes a mile high and connotes an art that combines the dead-end figuration of Pop, the dead-end materiality of Minimalism and a sense of humor that is, if not dead-end, then sharply deadpan. Mr. Jenney painted the pictures during the heyday of Conceptual Art, and if they were, in part, a rebuff to its disembodied verities, they also partook of its intellectual detachment."

His painting ''Here and There'' (1969), which depicts a white fence dividing a field of drippy, green brushstrokes, was in the 2004 exhibition ''The Undiscovered Country'' at the

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

in Los Angeles. His work is in many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. He currently shows with the

Barbara Mathes Gallery Barbara may refer to: People * Barbara (given name) * Barbara (painter) (1915–2002), pseudonym of Olga Biglieri, Italian futurist painter * Barbara (singer) (1930–1997), French singer * Barbara Popović (born 2000), also known mononymously as ...

. His painting "Meltdown Morning" is on display at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

Sources

* Ausstellungskatalog: ''documenta 5. Befragung der Realität – Bildwelten heute''; Katalog (als Aktenordner) Band 1: (Material); Band 2: (Exponatliste); Kassel 1972 * documenta Archiv (Hrsg.); ''Wiedervorlage d5 – Eine Befragung des Archivs zur documenta 1972''; Kassel/Ostfildern 2001, {{DEFAULTSORT:Jenney, Neil 1945 births Living people Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumni Painters from New York City 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists